Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically generate more web traffic is add new content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically begin to get web traffic when you publish web content to your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and businesses are exploring any advantage they believe will help them increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over other competitors. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to understand the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is running smoothly in the gizmo-making plant when suddenly, things grinds to a stop.
As no one can figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, immediately walks towards the control box. After staring at the wiring board for about 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a very gentle tap about 1 inch from the right side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything returns once more to normal.
The floor manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Feeling angry, the manager picks up the phone and dials the expert. Why were they expected to pay so much for less than five minutes work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a blog set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although experts often make difficult things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring a few settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a piece of software, clicking a button, or configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your server, your WordPress site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your hosting account that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and online services.
External Accounts
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all content gets published from a central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external sites to your setup, content linking back to your website gets automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account with Google Search Console have been set up, you can use your details to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add your account code to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to various other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social accounts before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can post your content to lots of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to ping the update services list when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your articles, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is immune from a cyber-attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Additional Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Post Categories And Tags
Tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.
(Categories help search engines better organize and index your pages, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engine bots can understand XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong web address into their web browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will normally be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add fresh content consistently to start attracting web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing methods.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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